Gravitational Wave Astrophysics and Observations

The direct observation of gravitational waves opens radically new opportunities for the study of compact objects – neutron stars and black holes – and the behaviour of extreme gravity in completed untested regimes.

A hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational radiation as an intimate consequence of General Relativity, a new class of "telescopes" is about to allow us to observe the gravitational-wave sky.

Our work spans the wide variety of challenges and opportunities in connection with present and future observations with the world-wide network of ground-based laser interferometers (LIGO, VIRGO, and GEO 600) and Pulsar Timing Arrays, including:

• The astrophysics of binary systems, e.g., characterising the populations of stellar-mass compact binaries and super-massive binary black holes with gravitational-wave observations. We have developed a state-of-the-art population synthesis and astrostatistic code COMPAS for this purpose.
• The development of advanced statistical techniques for Bayesian inference, based on stochastic sampling techniques such as Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Nested Sampling, in order to obtain the most accurate measurements of the physical parameters of the sources.
• The actual search for gravitational waves in the data that are currently being collected by ground-based laser interferometers. See the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration publications list for the most recent results of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration – and the International Pulsar Timing Array website for details.

Many of our activities are an integral part of the research efforts of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA). We make use of state-of-the art computational facilities for simulations and data analysis, including an in-house 1500-CPU Beowulf cluster.